Forbidden Type Spirit

Deon quickly stood up as Terros entered the hall. His eyes shone when he saw that Terros was holding a large quartz bowl.

"Are they…"

"These are the golden wateress spirits you requested, a speciality of the Fan Kingdom. I had no idea that this spirit was actually the precursor for the origin fountain spirit! If you can really refine the 2-Star origin fountain spirit…" Terros's eyes narrowed, waiting for Deon to respond.

Could he really succeed in refining a 2-Star gold class spirit?

"How many golden wateress spirits are in there?" Deon first asked, looking doubtful as he watched the movement within the bowl.

"Oh, I know it looks like a single spirit, but there are actually 500 spirits in here. Do you think this will be enough?" Terros explained.

As it turned out, the golden wateress spirit was an ordinary class 0-Star spirit, the Fan Kingdom produced them in bulk.

"It's enough." Deon nodded, not bothering to explain that he only needed a single one of these spirits to refine the 1-Star origin fountain spirit. "With this, I will be able to refine the 1-Star and 2-Star origin fountain spirits."

"Oh? If you say so." Terros replied with a raised eyebrow.

Deon could see that Terros doubted him, but he just smiled and took the bowl of spirits without saying anything else.

Terros furrowed his brows upon seeing Deon's casual attitude. He felt it necessary to remind him that this refinement was quite costly.

"These spirits are only a bit tedious to obtain, but the golden yuan berry is seriously expensive…it isn't worth it just for the 1-Star spirit, but the 1-Star version only needs two more yuan berries to produce the 2-Star spirit, which is obviously well worth it. Don't refine countless 1-Star origin fountain spirits if you're unable to refine the 2-Star evolution, it isn't profitable at all."

"Yes, I know." Deon quickly dismissed the worrying king who was gambling quite heavy on Deon's success this time.

"Right then…" Once Terros left the hall, Deon was ready to begin.

"1-Star gold class origin fountain spirit recipe…"

He recalled Remi's great grand father's recipe, muttering it under his breath and translating the needlessly poetic words into something more comprehensible in his mind.

He started by melting down berries of various colours within the cauldron.

Deon was in the royal palace right now and wouldn't be disturbed whilst he was refining, so he didn't hesitate to use Blood God's inheritance cauldron. This cauldron could easily tolerate any sort of backlash that Deon might possibly encounter. It was also fitted with a strange mechanism that assisted the spirit refiner and helped them to achieve a greater rate of success.

When Deon practised normally, he used an ordinary cauldron. Whilst this lowered his rate of success, it helped him to learn the proper technique.

At a step where he would have failed using a normal cauldron, the inheritance cauldron quickly fixed the instability.

"Two drops of honey, one drop of sweet nectar…"

Deon increased the heat and speed of stirring, then quickly added the most valuable ingredient; the golden yuan berry. He focussed all of his efforts, but the mixture still nearly exploded. Luckily, he reacted quickly and managed to remedy the instability without the cauldron's assistance.

The berry remained in the centre of the cauldron, absorbing all of the sweetness from the mixture.

Finally, he added the golden wateress spirit.

He used his origin energy to push the spirit into a ball of top quality mountain spring water, adding the two materials to the cauldron carefully. The golden wateress spirit was pressured further and further, until its body suddenly began to break apart and the ball of water turned gold.

"Good, it devoured the golden yuan berry!" Deon eyes lit up and he quickly added more water.

"More heat, I need purple powder…" Deon murmured as he threw a handful of purple powder below the cauldron. The cauldron rapidly heated up, causing the golden colour to gradually dissipate.

As soon as the golden colouration dissipated, the cauldron started to violently tremble. Deon was already prepared for this though. He extinguished the flame below the cauldron, then quickly took away the almost finished spirit from inside.

After binding the spirit, Deon laughed happily.

"Good, this method actually worked!"

The most tentative step in this refinement was the final step; the refinement within the soul space! The origin fountain spirit needed to be supplied with origin energy, but if that origin energy came from a shaman, it was tainted, resulting in a high rate of failure.

However, Deon didn't take this spirit into his soul space, because he had prepared a different spirit for this, a spirit mentioned by Blood God in one of the inheritance books, 'Enhanced Refining Spirit Recipes: Ranks 1 - 3'.

"2-Star false soul spirit, a silver class 2-Star spirit that mimics the soul space and can be used to bind or store up to five 1-Star spirits up to mythril class."

The origin energy contained within the false soul spirit was different than shaman origin energy, it was not tainted by any sort of will, it was almost like the natural spiritual energy which pervaded the world's atmosphere.

"Using this spirit to supply origin energy during a refinement is truly a genius method." Deon didn't stint on his praise towards Blood God.

Normally, the 1-Star origin fountain spirit would have a 20% success rate at best thanks to the final step which resulted in random failure 80% of the time. However, by using the false soul spirit, the maximum achievable success increased to 100%!

Many spirit refinements had a chance of failing regardless of how perfectly the refinement was carried out. Seeing this method that could overcome the chance of failure made Deon wonder whether those other spirit refinement recipes were actually just imperfect. Perhaps it was the refinement recipes' imperfection that was responsible for the random chance of failure!

"Hmm…" As Deon fell into thought, a mysterious golden light appeared within his eyes. This light was very faint, but it seemed to reflect the mysteries of the world within!

He sat there unmoving as countless thoughts and ideas flashed through his mind. His understand of spirit refinement grew rapidly in this state, as if all of his learnings from his recent efforts in spirit refinement were being extracted and multiplied together, developing into something more grand than before!

This was a very vulnerable state, but Deon did not enter this state by choice. In fact, a shaman could not enter this state at will, even though countless shamans wished to experience it!

Deon stayed stock still for a full two hours, until eventually, he blinked, before realising that he had unknowingly entered a state of enlightenment!

Enlightenment came and went without warning. Just now, Deon felt like he had seen through the mysteries of spirit refinement, if only a small portion of it…

But he quickly sobered up, realising that he had a rare opportunity right now. With the remnants of his enlightenment lingering on his mind, this was the perfect chance to attempt a certain refinement!

Others would be too dazed following their first enlightenment, but Deon would not let this opportunity go to waste!

If Deon had to say one spirit that he wanted to refine more than anything else, then he would without a doubt choose the forbidden sage refinement spirit. This was one of the spirits included in the 'Enhanced Refining Spirit Recipes: Ranks 1 - 3' text, but its recipe was probably more valuable than every other recipe in the book combined!

The reason for the extreme value of this recipe was simple; it was a forbidden type spirit recipe.

"Forbidden type spirits…" Deon muttered dazedly.

Unknowingly, in his unusual state, he had already taken out the cauldron and began the refinement. Even though Deon looked unfocussed, the precision in his movements and actions had reached an unprecedented level, he was clearly benefiting greatly from the lingering state of enlightenment!

Deon had learned about forbidden spirits recently, they were discussed in detail in one of the books written in the intuitive language, along with other useful teachings on spirits and spirit refinement.

The 'forbidden type' was a one time use spirit, very similar to the expenditure type. That being said, in a way, these spirits were even more expendable than expenditure type spirits.

The forbidden type was perhaps the most mysterious type of spirit on the continent. Forbidden spirits were, as the name implied, forbidden from existing.

The moment a forbidden spirit was refined, its existence would immediately begin to be rejected by the world. This could manifest in the form of the spirit rapidly deteriorating, withering away into old age and dying, simply fading away from the world, or in the most extreme case where the spirit overcame the world's natural rejection…it would actually attract heavenly tribulation, destroying it without a trace.

Because of this phenomena, forbidden spirits never appeared within auctions, they were almost always used immediately by the individual that refined them, and very rarely by an opportunistic nearby person.

However, using these spirits was often dangerous and unpredictable.

All forbidden spirits were at least holy class spirits. This meant that only one of each forbidden spirit could exist at any one time. The truth was even more extreme than this though - in reality, only a single forbidden spirit could exist on the spirit continent at any one time!

But even with that being said, these spirits were exceedingly rare, appearing on the continent perhaps once every ten years. For such an enormous land with an inestimable number of inhabitants, this was shockingly infrequent.

It was normal that forbidden spirits rarely came into being though, since the refinement recipes were the most secretive recipes in existence.

The strangeness of forbidden spirits did not end there.

Once a shaman bound and activated a forbidden spirit, they would be unable to refine that spirit ever again in their lifetime, no matter how hard they tried. Not only that, but every time a forbidden spirit was successfully refined, that specific spirit would become twice as difficult to refine again for everyone else on the continent thereafter!

Nobody truly understood these spirits, not even Blood God understood everything about them…he did know quite a lot, though. Blood God wouldn't say that he was the most knowledgeable person throughout the continent's history when it came to forbidden spirits, but he actually did make the claim that he was a close second!

This information flashed through Deon's unfocussed mind, along with everything he knew about the forbidden sage refinement spirit.

This spirit was an original recipe devised by Blood God, one that he had never revealed to the general public. In fact, it should be the case that Deon was the second person to ever see this recipe, the first being Blood God himself.

This meant that the forbidden sage refinement spirit had been refined just a single time, making it significantly easier to refine than the vast majority of known forbidden spirits!

Becoming twice as difficult wasn't much, but if ten people refined the spirit, it stacked up and became over one thousand times more difficult to refine!

So, what was the effect of this spirit that Deon was refining in a half-stupor, by throwing in countless expensive herbs, metals and liquids, seemingly carelessly, but actually with a jaw-dropping level of expert precision?

It was a spirit that improved a shaman's comprehension of refining in general. This improvement was both obvious and subtle, showing results immediately, but also continuing to prove its immense worth over time, seemingly without end. It would boost a shaman's very talent and foundation in spirit refinement, opening their perception and mind to new ideas and possibilities, letting them develop their own spirit refinement in an innovative and never seen before direction.

Blood God speculated that refining this spirit before refining any other forbidden spirits would provide the spirit refiner with incredible mysterious benefits. He also stated that refining and using this spirit would drastically improve a shaman's ability to refine other forbidden spirits!

This was a shocking claim, but it was supported by the fact that Blood God himself successfully refined 13 forbidden spirits throughout his life, with the forbidden sage refinement spirit being his 5th. He even attributed his latter success in refining eight more forbidden spirits to his successful usage of this spirit, despite this occurring in the final thousandth of his lifespan!

As for why Deon suddenly decided to attempt the refinement of this shocking spirit, his main motivation was simply to use the process as a means for tempering his refinement skill. He was currently in a state of lingering enlightenment, if he practised this highly complex refinement whilst in this state, he would no doubt benefit greatly.

The other reason was because of Blood God's speculation…Blood God believed that this spirit was not only much easier to refine during a state of refinement enlightenment, but also, that lower rank shamans would experience less difficulty and resistance during its refinement.

Deon did not really believe that he would succeed here, but it couldn't hurt to try!